Some of the teams move more as a result of the movement of other teams than their own performance. For example, there was no way I wasn't dropping the Spark and Valiant below the Reign and Dynasty this week, so both teams start with a minimum of a two spot increase as a result. You could argue that Reign may only move up one spot if you let the Dynasty jump over them after that, however, the Dynasty played an opponent that is likely weaker than the one the Reign beat, and therefore it's tough to argue against moving the Reign up higher than one spot with the strength of schedule argument. I think keeping the Gladiators above the two teams is a fair call to make.

I probably would have given the Uprising more of a break for roster issues if I had known their issues were temporary when I finalized the rankings earlier this week. I want to be consistent and lock my rankings in at the same time every week regardless of when I have time to finish the article, so the rankings get completed before the article is published. At the time I dropped the Uprising down six spots, it was known Fusions was ineligible to play and it was assumed he would continue to be. They would probably remain above the Outlaws and Mayhem if I had ranked under the assumption that Fusions would return this week.

While Bogur has a chance to be the first Bulgarian to play in Contenders, he is not the first to play in Trials. Linepro, who played in Season 2 with Samsung Morning Stars Blue, is listed on Liquipedia as both Spanish and Bulgarian.

Chinese streams tend to have massive viewer numbers. Part of it could be population (remember China has over 1 billion people all on the same timezone), while part of it could be inflated numbers. Viewership stats for Chinese streams are generally considered unreliable because they have a reputation for being inflated (this wouldn't be Leave's doing, but the streaming service itself).

However, I'd say Overwatch looks fairly popular in China from an outsider's perspective. They are the only region that regularly has tournaments outside of Contenders and most of them end in LANs. Someone more familiar with the Chinese scene can probably speak with a more informed perspective, though.

It's worth noting that Samsung's Italian division is behind this organization rather than Samsung as a whole (otherwise they probably wouldn't be in Contenders Europe because Samsung is a Korean company!). So if Samsung were to make a push for the Overwatch League, it probably wouldn't be with this roster and in fact would probably be based in Korea (this is assuming Samsung would frown upon one of their divisions independently investing between 20 and 60 million USD in projects outside of selling Samsung devices).

It has previously been stated that OWL would like to end up with 28 teams. Since there are currently 20 teams, that means there may be only eight more teams who will join the Overwatch League. Where do you think they should be?

Since the league is being reduced to eight, not all of the playoff teams qualified for next Contenders and were demoted to Trials. Most of them must have accepted their invites rather than disbanded, leaving little space for Open Division teams.

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Very disappointed we won't be seeing silkthread playing again but it's good on him that he was able to work with the team to pursue a future he thought was best for him without any conflict.

On another note, sucks to see that the team signed this entirely Chinese-speaking roster without including Kami. I think he's the country's best DPS player eligible for OWL not on any of the other three Chinese teams.

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Almost positive Snow wouldn't count toward it because he has lived in the US for most of his life. I'm not entirely sure what Blizzard's criteria is for "resident" of the region but it would have to be very strict to not include Snow.